(1) Field of the Invention
The invention pertains generally to media and entertainment systems utilized at hospitality establishments such as hotels and resorts. More specifically, the invention relates to dynamically assigning a central media device supporting a network-based media sharing protocol on a computer network of a hospitality establishment to a particular guest device for media sharing purposes. The particular guest device is thereby enabled to share media content with the central media device and the shared media content is automatically played back on an output device located at a physical location associated with the particular guest device within the hospitality establishment.
(2) Description of the Related Art
Guests often bring personal electronic devices with them when they stay at hotels, and these devices typically have stored therein pictures, movies, music, and other media content. One problem encountered by guests is how to utilize the capabilities of the hotel's media system to play media content stored on the guest's personal device. For example, a guest may wish to play vacation videos stored on their personal device on the big-screen television (TV) and high-fidelity audio system provided in their hotel room.
Published Canadian Patent No. 2,707,202 filed on Jun. 17, 2010 and corresponding Published U.S. Patent Application No. 2011/0314497 filed on Jun. 10, 2011 disclose methods of integrating guest content from a guest's personal device with a hospitality media system. In an exemplary embodiment, a user of a room connects a guest device to the media system and has guest content available on the guest device cataloged by the media system to form a guest content list. The guest content is automatically associated with the user's assigned room, and the user can thereafter utilize any of the in-room media devices located within that room to perform media system functions utilizing content selected from the guest content list.
Some electronic devices brought to hospitality establishments by guests natively support one or more network-based media sharing protocols such as AirPlay® by Apple® Inc., DLNA® by the Digital Living Network Alliance®, AllShare® by Samsung® Inc., etc. It would be beneficial if the guest could stream content from their personal device to in-room media devices of the hotel's media and entertainment system using these protocols similar to how they can stream content to their home TV via a local area network (LAN) installed in their home.
Most hotels do not have separate computer networks installed in each guest room. Instead, most hotels have a single media network to which all TVs and other in-room media devices within the hotel are connected in order to play media content from a central streaming server. Because existing network-based media sharing protocols (e.g., AirPlay®, DLNA®, AllShare®, etc.) are designed for the residential industry, if a guest device supporting one of these protocols were allowed to be connected to the hotel's media network, it would automatically discover and be able to share media content with all compatible media devices available in the hotel. Such behavior is unacceptable in the hospitality industry because this would allow a guest device to stream personal media content to any TV in any room of the hotel.